Foreverland Is Dead

worse than her heels. She paces around the gurgling mess, yanks the keycard from around her neck.
    She turns around, facing the meadow, looping the keycard over her head. She grinds her teeth, hardening against the soft emotions rising in her throat.
    Roc spits blood.
    “I don’t know where we are,” Cyn says. “But two miles out there is another fence.”
    She rests her hands on her hips, turns to the others.
    “Do you know what that means? Do you?”
    She waits.
    “It means we’re never escaping.”
    “Why?” Jen asks.
    Cyn doesn’t answer because it’s obvious. They all know; they just don’t want to say it. There’s a fence surrounding the hills, an enormous dome over this world like some science experiment. Only they can’t see the gods’ microscopes, or what they’re looking at. Or what they’re doing to them.
    She knows one thing they don’t, though: bad things are beyond the fence.
    “I don’t why we’re here, but I know this.” Cyn points at Roc. “You’re poison.”
    Roc attempts to sit up. The tip of her tongue pokes around her lower lip, accessing the damage.
    “You have two choices.” Cyn holds up two fingers. “One, we tie you to your bed and feed you like a cripple. You don’t ever leave it. You understand?”
    She looks at the girls. They’re still speechless.
    “If you don’t like that, you’re banished from this camp. You go out there on your own. We give you enough gear and food to last a couple days, but you never show your face here again. If you do, I’ll throw you through the fence and you’ll sleep forever. You understand this?”
    “Cyn, don’t say that,” Jen says.
    “She would’ve killed you, Jen! She was trying to kill Miranda, and she’s eating all the food and contributing nothing. You know it—all of you know it. She was going to end us. I’ll do the same to her.” Her eyes are so relaxed, so convincing. “I won’t hesitate.”
    Jen covers her mouth, her voice muffled by her fingers. Mad puts her arm around her. Kat watches, impassively.
    “We’ll vote.” Cyn hold up two fingers. “I vote number two.”
    Roc pushes up on her elbows. Head down.
    “Kat?” Cyn says.
    There’s a long pause. Kat stares at Roc. “Two.”
    Cyn points at Jen. She shakes her head, refuses to answer.
    “Mad?”
    Roc turns a hard stare, focus finally returning with vengeance. The cook looks at the ground, then back at her.
    “I can’t do it, Cyn.”
    Cyn nods. Roc spits at her feet, flecking the bandages with blood. The backs of her feet are already soaked with her own.
    “Get up.” Cyn waves her to stand. “You try anything and I knock you. Now get up.”
    Roc takes her time moving to her knees, slowly standing. Her shoulders slump. Cyn puts her finger on her chest and begins pushing. Roc backs up a step, slapping her hand away.
    Cyn points. “Keep stepping.”
    Roc steps backwards, glaring beneath furrowed brows. Cyn shadows her steps until she feels the fence in her neck. Roc stops.
    Jen is sobbing.
    “You’ve stolen food. You do nothing to help us survive—”
    “I helped pull you out of the fence on day one.”
    “You tried to burn down the brick house. You’re nothing but a threat, and you don’t deserve to stay. But you can thank those two you won’t freeze tonight in the wild.”
    “Kiss my ass.”
    “Step backwards.”
    Cyn is within striking distance, dangerously close, daring her to do something. Roc doesn’t take the bait, the last of her dignity falling away.
    “Step back or get knocked back.”
    They stare.
    The battle is over.
    Roc steps across the fence line. Her eyes roll back as the fence lights up the knot in her neck. She collapses, unconscious. Cyn stands at her feet, close enough that her vertebrae shiver.
    “Get something to bind her,” she says.
    Jen’s sobs fade.
    The leather-bound book spoke of a dangerous girl.
    It wasn’t Roc .

OCTOBER
    I dreamed a dream,
    And it was you.

    26

    Cyn chops wood until her feet are numb. She keeps them heavily wrapped, but it’ll be weeks before she can wear boots. She doesn’t mind the cold. It soothes the wounds. She changes the bandages frequently, keeps them clean.
    Her knuckles ache. Gripping the ax for hours at a time doesn’t help, but they need wood. And she needs something to do. She refuses to sit still.
    If she does nothing, she thinks. She remembers.
    The brick house is still locked tight, with no word from Miranda. Roc occupies the bunkhouse, and she’d rather not